10 SUPERLAWYERS.COM A T TORNE YS SELEC TED TO SUPER LA WYERS WERE CHOSEN IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROCESS ON PAGE 26.more about it.” It takes the next step andsomebody like Bloomberg picks it up, andthen somebody like The New York Times.

But you have to begin somewhere. There
is a real arrogance among lawyers. They
believe that the results that they get in the
courtroom are just so radically important
that it’s going to be a sustainable story …
but it’s a three-day story at best, and then
people forget it on the fourth day. You have
to be able to sustain that story. So Bobby
and I started that with Air America.

It was a whole host of great progressives
that became our friends, and they remain our
friends. So Air America fell apart; everybody
went their own way. Rachel [Maddow] went
to MSNBC, Thom [Hartmann] went to RT
Network and Free Speech TV. People look at
Air America and say, “Oh my God! It didn’t
work.” Well, it did work, because the message
is still there. Bobby and I still do this, week in
and week out. It came out of a combination
of lawyering and politics, and you can’t
talk about one without the other. You can’t
change much just practicing law anymore.

Q: Where is Ring of Fire carried now?

A: New York, Chicago, LA—we’re really
all over the country in little parts. But it’s
not so much the transmission of the radio
program every week. This week we might
be talking about Rick Perry and the judge
failing to dismiss his case in Texas. We will
take that segment and we will cut it up and
it will be used throughout the Internet. And
it has pretty big legs because of that.

A: I used to do Fox. It was torturous, and it
was [also] fun, because you could approach
it with reckless abandon. So I did it as long
as I could stand it, I guess is the best way
to put it.

Q: On Ring of Fire, you are called“America’s Lawyer.” Who came up withthat title and why?A: Either Thom Hartmann or Ed Schultz.

The issues I was talking about were not
just about my narrow practice. The issue
may be climate change, and what is it
that we have to do. It might be poverty;
it might be minimum wage. It really
wasn’t put together as any kind of big
PR push initially, but all of a sudden, it
started taking hold. I walk through an
airport sometimes and people say, “You’re
America’s Lawyer.” Johnnie Cochran
used to be my law partner; he used to be
“America’s Lawyer.” He has passed on,
and I don’t think they mind me using that.

People can’t remember Papantonio, butthey can remember “America’s Lawyer.”Q: You’re working on a majorenvironmental case now.

A: DuPont made a product called C8,which is an additive that they used to makeTeflon. 3M used to make it and … decidedthat it was too dangerous to make. DuPontcontinued to make it. DuPont then tookthe toxins from their product and theywould release them into the water system,which affected the aquifer, drinking-wateraquifer, for many counties between WestVirginia and Ohio. It may be the biggestenvironmental case in America.

Q: So where does it stand?A: The judge had put together a blue-chippanel of epidemiologists. And the panelcame back and said that the C8 causestesticular cancer [among other diseases].

So we will be going to trial with those first
test cases coming up this year. [Editor’s
note: According to newspaper reports, the
panel found probable links to six medical
conditions; DuPont, which has promised to
phase out usage of the chemical by this year,
has denied liability.]

Q: You referred earlier to your “Mass
Torts Made Perfect” program, and I
know the speakers there have included
President Clinton. That made me wonder
how many presidents you’ve met.

A: Well, I have not gone out of my way to
do that. This is going to sound so odd, but
I’ve got to tell you: If you walk into some
lawyer’s office that is all about meeting
the president … you walk in their office
and they’ve got pictures of “here is me
and Obama,” “here is me and Clinton” … I
mean, it’s almost like you are walking into
[the office of] somebody who is a hunter,
and they’ve got all these heads on the wall,
like, “I shot this.” Well, OK, I like Obama;

I worked to try and get him elected. WePapantonio shares his progressiveviewpoint on Ring of Fire, the show heco-hosts with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. TheInternet adds mileage to their message.